Broadband service providers, such as cable service providers, typically provide a wide variety of services to any number of customers or households. Examples of provided services include television service, telephone service, and Internet service. Typically, a cable service provider utilizes one or more cable modem termination systems (“CMTSs”) to facilitate the provision of broadband communications to customer devices (e.g., cable modems) and to facilitate the receipt of upstream communications from customer devices.
Within conventional cable infrastructures, a CMTS typically performs a wide variety of high-level mapping and routing functions. More particularly, the CMTS typically receives data, such as video data and/or voice data, that includes a layer three (“L3”) address. The L3 address is typically an IP address of a customer device, and the CMTS must map the L3 address to a layer two (“L2”) address for the customer device. For example, a conventional CMTS typically maps IP addresses to physical addresses, such as Media Access Control (“MAC”) addresses. A conventional CMTS also typically identifies a quality of service (“QOS”) or priority associated with various communications and determines a sequence for routing data packets based upon the quality of service.
As a result of the functionalities performed by conventional CMTS devices, these devices are becoming increasingly complex and costly. Additionally, next generation converged multi-service access platform (“CMAP”) devices, which are configured to handle video communications in addition to data communications, are being developed as relatively complex devices. As new functionality is being added to CMTS devices and CMAP devices, the cost and size of these devices are increasing. Additionally, a wide variety of engineering challenges are being encountered as new features, such as Digital Program Insertion (“DPI”), are added to the devices. Accordingly, an opportunity exists for improved systems, methods, architectures, apparatus, and devices that facilitate the routing of broadband communications.